A day for veterans

Crowds were several rows deep along D Street in Marysville on Wednesday as the Veterans Day Parade, led by 95-year-old Joe Langdell, made its way downtown.

Langdell, a Yuba City resident and retired lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy Reserves, is one of the last remaining Pearl Harbor survivors who served on the USS Arizona during the attack on Dec. 7, 1941.

He said he wasn't too impressed with the crowds, or with a promotional vehicle a local car dealer wanted him to ride in.

"I said 'no,'" Langdell recalls telling the car dealer Wednesday morning. "What I wanted was an open jeep. So that's what I rode in."

Many spectators and participants, however, said the throngs of children waving flags and whole families that sat together on curbs, or peeked over shoulders to see the promenade, were — in themselves — a happy surprise.

"What a turnout," said Master Sgt. Terrence White from Beale Air Force Base 's 940th Civil Engineering Squadron. "It was huge."

White and about a hundred other Beale airmen participated in the parade or assisted with logistics, in spite of a week-long Air Combat Command inspection under way on the base.

Cynthia Verrill, who co-chairs the Yuba-Sutter Veterans Day Parade Committee, said the parade's viewers numbered in the thousands, and were nearly as many as in 2001 — just two months after 9/11. That had been the first parade her group helped organize, and it attracted the biggest crowd to date.

"We're bigger than the Bok Kai, we're bigger than the Christmas Parade," she boasted of this year's success.

Of the 124 entrants whose groups marched, rode or drove down the parade route, four were school bands — including musicians from Anna L. McKenney Intermediate School, River Valley High School, Wheatland High School and Yuba City High School.

An antique car club and Junior ROTC group from Lindhurst High School also came through, and a K-9 Unit from Beale Air Force Base made an appearance.

Several participants speculated that the high spectator turnout might have been prompted, in part, by the fatal shootings at Fort Hood Army Base last week.

"It may have brought service members back into people's minds," said Donna Hannaford, who helps coordinate the parade each year.

Tech. Sgt. Margaret O'Malley said that seeing uniformed service members in a parade "helps bring the human part (of military work) forward."

O'Malley, a reservist who worked as a flight medic during Desert Storm, marched with her fellow reserve airmen.

Master Sgt. Marielinda Pierce drove 10 hours from Tule, Ore., to Beale as she has done once a month for the last year.

The petite reservist and mother of six said she enjoyed taking a break from training to march in the parade and accept thank-yous from local residents.

Pierce said she has a long history of military service in her family. Her oldest son is serving in the U.S. Marines.

The rain held off. Hannaford said she could not have expected a better parade or showing.

"There was not a spot of sidewalk to be seen," she said, marveling about the crowd.

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Nancy Pasternack at 749-4712 or at npasternack@appealdemocrat.com